


The Princesses and the Pea-Curse

by Pingoodle (ThatAloneOne)



Category: Prinsessen paa Ærten | The Princess and the Pea - Hans Christian Andersen
Genre: F/F, Genderbending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-23 21:42:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18710500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/pseuds/Pingoodle
Summary: The visiting princess just wants to sleep without finding weird things in her bed.The prince(ss) who was a prince in the original story just wants a wife.Now with: magic and queer ladies!





	The Princesses and the Pea-Curse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lady_ragnell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/gifts).



> Dear lady_ragnell,
> 
> Seeing your post about this exchange inspired me to sign up for it! And now here I am with this gift for you! I do hope you enjoy it. It wasn't actually one of the fandoms I signed up for but I just kept thinking back to it and now here we are.

There was something in this damn bed.

I should have expected something like this. The room should have tipped me off, if nothing else had. Most people didn’t provide luscious accommodations for unexpected guests, let alone the kind of luxury that required ladders to appreciate.

I should have counted _before_  I got in the bed, not after. Twenty and twenty was the kind of magic I was supposed to be good at noticing. But I had been wet and cold and grumpy and relying on my word being taken at, well...  _my word_. Back home, it would have been that simple. If someone called themselves a princess they tended to have a reason to do that.

But not here. And so it left me peering down at the ground and trying not to think about how far down it was. Even shoving the near two-dozen eiderdown blankets into a pile wouldn’t soften my landing if I slipped.

No time for lallygagging, then. This had gone on long enough.

It was an exciting ordeal to get down off the pile of bedding without sending it toppling down on top of me. It didn’t help that the pea-curse kept poking at me, a little speck of emptiness and sharp magic-feel against the quiet sleep-sense of the castle. It would have felt more out of place back home, when the walls were woven with magic and the cobwebs swept themselves away each midnight. But even here, trying to sleep near a pea-curse felt like lying on a handful of rusted nails.

Reaching the floor was a relief, though the stone beneath my feet was ice compared to my little nest atop the bedding mountain. I knelt next to the bedframe, muttering a few unladylike words at the chill against my knees, and got to it.

It took what felt like an eternity to worm my hand between the correct mattresses and tug out the curse. The pea crackled against my palm, a nasty little shadow-wrapped spell meant to put me to sleep.

Really, I don’t know why the queen had bothered. If she had been wanting me to sleep, she should have stuck with the mattresses and duvets and left the magic well alone.

I frowned. Or maybe she _had_  left the magic to others. I peered closer at the pea, picking loose a few threads with my fingernail. This was tight, fresh work. The kind that took more time than a queen would have to spare. Whoever had made it had training, too, and the expensive kind. None of the village . Something always happened to them. And by something I meant money. There was a reason most of the royal families and duchies had such a prevalence of magic users both among them and working for them, and it wasn’t their shining personalities.

The queen wanted a witch for her daughter’s wife.

My finger slipped, the nail catching, still ragged from the road, and I slumped against the tower of mattresses for a half-second. The sleep felt like the good kind, tension dropping from my shoulders I didn’t even know I’d been carrying. I sagged against the pile of bed and really, climbing back in sounded nice. Or maybe if I just dropped myself into the pile of-

“ _Augh_ ,” I declared, and pushed back at the pea-curse enough that I could stay upright. But it was caught now, and I was too tired to try and detangle each of its pretty little knots. Maybe in the morning they’d be easier to untie? Maybe if I just dropped myself into the pile of-

Someone cleared their throat. Another startled stumble later, I was staring at the princess. She looked wrung out, the smudges under her eyes dark enough I couldn’t tell if they were from a fight or exhaustion. But more than that she looked… relieved? She looked at me like I was a miracle, not a bedraggled, tired, clumsy girl. “So you really are a princess.”

“One of these days,” I told her, trying not to look like I’d gotten my finger stuck in this little trap of her mothers, “the kingdoms are going to issue a joint proclamation about which kind of princess is the actual princess and we’re all going to be better off for it.”

She didn’t fall for the distraction, blast her. She only sighed, and the door swung shut behind her. The door swung shut behind her. The room was dark enough in the guttering candlelight that she could have plausibly kicked it shut, but I felt the ping of magic and became a hell of a lot more awake. Suddenly the pea and her mother and pretty much everything else about this castle made a whole lot more sense. If she was one of the only magic-users in the palace and had been off seeking a princess, then no wonder her mother was ready to do anything on the off chance she could find her a real witch-wife.

The princess smiled at me, almost. “Would you like any help with that?”

I frowned at the pea-curse. It was starting to crawl up my finger, encouraged by my lack of aggressive response. Maybe if I just dropped myself into the pile of-

Her hands were warm when they touched mine and that helped keep me awake more than any of my training ever had. In a matter of seconds, she’d coaxed the pea-curse to retreat and go back to being inert. It seemed to sulk in the other princesses palm, the rusted-nails feeling taking a turn for the sour.

“There,” she said, into the silence, and let my hands go. The quiet hum of her magic dropped off, leaving me listening only to the cloaked buzz of the castle. It felt like a loss. “Did you need something else, then? I felt something ping down here and figured I should check it out.”

A ping was an understatement. Before the princess had arrived with her annoyingly easy grasp on the pea-curse and the situation in general, that thing had been yelling at me. But I shook my head. “I should be fine.” I gestured back at the pile of absurdity behind me. “I should sleep, probably. Long day ahead and long day behind, you know.”

The princess bit her lip, glancing down like she needed something else to look at. “I know. Are you sure you don’t need any sort of warm drink or-”

“No.” With the magic safely curled away elsewhere, I wasn’t any more likely to fall asleep than I had been before I’d been stupid and distracted by her soft eyes and gentle hands. Getting back into bed without concussing myself off something wouldn’t be an issue. “I’ll be alright.”

A short silence. The princess watched me. Her fingers moving cast shadows against the wall, the pea rolling over and over in her hand like a worry stone. The lack of noise bit at me until the words came rolling out.

“So what did you need a princess for, anyway?” I waved my hand at the room in general, the twenty-on-twenty and the eiderdown. “It doesn’t look like your coffers are hurting for want of alchemy. And you’ve got a good thing going with that thing, you don’t need a teacher.”

“We don’t need money, no,” the princess said mildly. “And thank you for the compliment. I’m afraid I need to brush up on my security, though, since my mother was able to grab one of the pea-curses I’d been working on without me noticing.”

It made me feel better to know that at least the princess wasn’t in on her mother’s methods. “Well, you can’t be good looking _and_  good at everything, I suppose.”

A smile broke over her face like an unsubtle dawn. The shadows under her eyes lifted slightly. “I’m good looking, then? Well thank you again, princess.” She sketched out a bow, still smiling. “I’d be remiss in not returning the compliment.”

My cheeks went hot. “Well.”

We both stared at each other for a moment. I’d temporarily run out of words and the princess seemed content to grin at me for the moment.

Then I frowned. “But another princess. Why?”

“Can’t you feel it?” The toe of her boot tapped against the stone floors, her fingers spread wide at the walls. “Look at it, really look, and ask again.” Her fingers spun against the sleep-pea. “ _Listen_.”

So I looked. Kneeling, one hand on the bedpost and one against the stone beneath me and listened close to the hum of the magic.

Before I had gone more than a half-second, my eyes were open and I was staring at her, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.

It wasn’t humming, like I thought. And the twenty-and-twenty had muffled more than the hard edges of the pea. The whole palace was singing, clear and true and echoing. The land below us was alive in a way I’d never felt, chorusing with a thousand voices and a thousand lives and a hundred thousand spells weaving themselves into life.

It was deafening. It was blinding. It was a punch to the face and stomach and soul just as much as it was a balm to my heart and mind.

I stood as fast as I could without falling over. With my hand gone from the cold song of the land, I could almost hear again. Almost see and think again.

And I saw a lot in the princess’s eyes that I hadn’t seen anywhere else in a long time.

I folded a hand over hers, the one still holding the sleep-pea, and brought the other one up to cup her cheek. She leaned into me like a ship to the wind, eyes fluttering closed. This close, our noses near touching, the heat of her skin on mine, the magic of the land finally died down to a far-off chant.

“You need a court,” I told her, fingers curling into the ruffled gold of her hair. I could see her in beautiful detail this close up, painted in candlelight and magic. “More. A way to understand.”

She half-laughed, warm breath against my cheek.“A princess.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it, any more than I could help leaning in that last inch and pressing a fleeting kiss to her lips. Then I pressed a kiss to the back of her closed hand, the sleep-pea within, and said, “I can help with a bed fit for a princess, at least. And maybe some peace.”

Her eyes opened. She smiled. And she kissed me back. “Like I said,” she told me, lips moving against mine. She might still have been laughing too, but I didn’t mind. “A princess.”

**Author's Note:**

> When the archive isn't anon anymore, my usual sign-off will go here!


End file.
